


burn the old wheel down

by sesquidpedalian



Series: Experiments In Second Person [1]
Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Family Issues, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Not Canon Compliant, POV Second Person, Unhappy Ending, Unreliable Narrator, Wilbur Soot-centric, no they are not healthy, other characters show up for like a paragraph each, sorry but c!philza isn't super sympathetic in this one, why is philza's tag just his flesh realm name??? why??, yes there are family dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-13 08:53:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29648841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sesquidpedalian/pseuds/sesquidpedalian
Summary: A triptych of a man on fire.
Relationships: Wilbur Soot & Phil Watson, Wilbur Soot & Technoblade & TommyInnit & Phil Watson
Series: Experiments In Second Person [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2178690
Kudos: 9





	burn the old wheel down

**Author's Note:**

> i promised myself i wouldn't write about the dream smp. i immediately turned around and wrote about the dream smp.
> 
> title from "Hieroglyphs" by The Oh Hellos

Even in L’Manburg’s freedom, its air tastes of ash. You make a point of leaving the windows open, prop the door with a scrap of wood on nice days, and wonder how people will fare growing up in a place where the weight of war is palpable in one’s lungs.

You did not dream of running a country when you were a child. Granted, there was little you dreamed of as a child besides your next warm meal and a mother that your father might talk about without making fridge jokes. But the idea of a _president_ , much less the notion of you being one, was about the furthest thing from your young mind. 

You’re a president now. You stare down at the page before you, covered in meaningless scribbles that even you can barely read. It’s been hours, and you have no idea what you were thinking. The ink is smudged, your handwriting cramped. You have no idea if you _are_ thinking. There is a blue-black stain on the corner of the page that you stare uncomprehendingly at for a while. Then you hiss like an angry creeper and tear the page out. You crumple the thing into a ball and toss it into the steadily-growing pile in the corner of your office. 

You’re going to run out of paper soon.

You might not have known for certain when you started this enterprise, but you had some sense in you. You did not bite and claw and snarl ( _and charm and speak and smile_ ) your way to this position thinking it would be easy. You are not so naïve as to believe running a country is a simple thing, as simple as taking down one white-masked tyrant. There are laws to be made, treasuries to be managed, citizens you need to look after. You’re in charge, and nothing is simple, and ultimately what that means is that you’re stuck sitting inside, watching the sun stream in through the open windows as children run and play outdoors.

And those aren’t just any children out there, are they? Outside, Tommy laughs in that explosive, unmistakable way of his—the kind that sounds fake and never is. Tubbo is shouting something you can’t make out, shrieking over the sound of Fundy’s cackling laughter. Fundy grins so wide you could swear you see his too-sharp canines from all the way behind your oak-wood desk. 

You turn your gaze back to the fresh sheet of paper, fighting the way the gears in your head churn, stuck as wheels in mud. It would be such a relief to just take a break, stop struggling for clear-headed thought and simply walk away into the bright sunshine. But you’re in charge, and nothing is simple.

The fact of the matter is, you didn’t grow up with this country. You don’t know what you’re doing, not really. It’s not like your dad ever mentioned the rules for running a country. 

(Your dad, you think with an emotion you refuse to name as bitterness. Your dad, with the golden hair and rough hands. Your dad, with the violent grin and a love not even dragons survive. Your dad, who stuck around long enough to teach you how to stay alive, and then left an easy wave and a brilliant smile, carried away by the faint hum of those shimmering, insectile wings.)

You didn’t grow up with this burden on your shoulders, and it aches in a way that has much less to do with the physical aching of your aging bones than the children might think. (They laugh anyway and call you an old man when you step out of your office complaining of back pain at the end of each day. You groan, stretching far enough to make your joints crackle like kindling, and invariably they tease you some more.)

Once upon a time, you had no one to hold your hand and tell you what the world would be like. You got a few sharp sticks, a knit sweater, and the fading memory of a crooked smile to keep you warm during the night. Certainly, you did not get a _country._ You did not get this promise, this hope, this lightness under your ribs that said you could be safe here. You turned and you ran through those long dark nights and when you ended up in a place that could’ve been home, a boy too young for this life at your side and precious little in the way of possessions besides the words in your brain and the clothes on your back, you thought, _Okay. I can do this._

The blank page stares tauntingly up at you. You adjust your grip on the pen and scribble a few notes to yourself. In your dazed state, you can’t tell if they’re promising or not. Your head is swimming in muted half-thought, nothing tangible getting close enough to grab and wrangle into actual, useful ideas. You resist the urge to bury your face in your hands. You won your way here with words. You’ll win your way through the rest of your life with these words if you must.

_If you must._

You look again out that open door, one last glance before you return to your work. The early spring breeze tousles your hair, inviting and cool. 

You are tired in a way that wipes your mind blank, inexhaustible possibility in every direction. It would be nice to go out and see what the others are up to, but you didn’t have a place like this when you were a kid. So bright, so alive, so symphonic and brilliant and safe.

You watch Fundy present a lever on the side of what looks to be an iron box. Tubbo is saying something, pointing as he absentmindedly bats Tommy’s hands away from sweet temptation. You see Fundy put his hand on the lever and grin, his ears sticking straight up in anticipatory delight. He says something that makes all three of them laugh.

If you couldn’t have this place back then, you think, then these children must.

_You must._

You glance at the papers in the corner, gathering like so much fuel waiting for a spark. An explosion from the contraption outside sets a few pages on your desk rustling. You scramble to keep your precious work from flying across the room, spitting curses under your breath, but in the end, you know what really matters.

You’d light every page aflame for them.

* * *

In the deep, lonely dark of Pogtopia, you cast your gaze up, and dream of fire. The ravine’s walls tower above you. No sunlight can seep through the cracks to get this far down; your people have to make do with the flickering, too-orange shine of the lanterns. 

You hate it here, shivering without the daylight you used to take for granted. You lost more than a few luxuries in your exile. One of them: knowing what it’s like not to be numb with cold. You pull your coat tighter around yourself and examine the blue powder on your hands. You’ve been grinding lapis into dye for the past hour.

Techno is somewhere nearby, organizing your supplies and shooting you strange looks, complicated and melancholy, when he thinks you don’t notice. (As much as he disavows your family, he has something of your shared father in his eyes: so distant, so forlorn, so terribly far away even standing right next to you.)

The lapis lazuli leaves your skin looking blue as a corpse, but you carry on unseeing. It’s important work, it must be, or else why would your hands be stained so? It must be, because you remember Tommy asking for the dye. It must be, because they have stolen the light from you and for now, there is nothing else you can do. It must be. The old story: _A child shunned by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth_.

You are not a child—you and yours stopped being children too fast and too young—but the ravine tells a different tale. A loose green bandana, tied around one of the stony supports. A free-hanging chain over a patch of dark where a stolen lantern once was. Stone-and-cobble walls marred only by the marks of training swords swung too hard for the sheer fun of it. Technoblade stocks the chests full of baked potatoes, installs railings on your precarious staircases, sharpens weapons by firelight. Time becomes nothing at all.

There is no life to this place.

It occurs to you that Tommy might be avoiding you.

In a memory, or in a nightmare, or maybe right now in this too-real present, Dream is handing you the explosives, and in their brilliant red casing and ink-coloured wiring, you feel the promise of something warm again. 

(There is a nagging at the back of your head that blazes up, fierce and demanding, every time you see that brilliant smiling mask. In the past, you thought it some kind of hate. Now you know better. Now you know it is the potentiality of light, the kind of light even you cavern-dwellers have a hope of attaining.

Tommy shouts and fights and nearly kills himself trying to tackle Dream. You shake your head and hold him still and remind him of the promises you failed to keep, the ways you have failed him, over and over. He doesn’t understand.)

A soothing breeze tickles the edges of your awareness, but when you pull off your hat to feel it ruffle your hair, there is nothing but the vague howling of a storm passing by far overhead. Techno gives you an impassive look that some distant, uncaring part of you knows to read as concern.

You shudder into the silence. God, what you wouldn’t give to be warm again. 

You’re stuck here for now, and that means thinking, planning, plotting. Write your way out. What did you do, before, presented with impossible Sisyphean dilemmas? You tore the pages out, let them pile away in the far corners of your conscience, and now they’re spilling everywhere, all their ruined potential swarming you like Tubbo’s bees.

Tubbo. Where is Tubbo these days? With Fundy. With your son. Helping a dictator. Playing the Fools, those two. In the end, the Fool becomes the Hanged Man. They’ll burn out the sun before anyone is satisfied. You laugh like a sob, causing a puff of blue dust to shoot off the table into your face. You sneeze violently and then it’s Techno’s turn to laugh. He’s the only one around these days. He sees the bombs in your hands, and nods.

He knows a thing or two about survival.

(You might’ve gotten a few sticks and a smile, but he got even less. Somehow, he made it out alive. Somehow, he made it out _caring_ , though no one would know it until they saw how he talked to his horses. Somehow, he still loves your father more than anything in this world. 

But for now, a common purpose. For now, you love him just for that dangerous grin, for that cruel-edged name, for the weapon you’ve made of it. With the Blade in your hands, how could anyone stop you?)

Blue coats the front of your shirt. The icy feeling slithers back into you. Somewhere, even now, Schlatt is seated in that office at the very centre of your country, its lifeblood in his stranglehold, his clawed hands resting so temptingly near its pulsing heart. _Your_ country. _Your_ home. _Your_ L’Manburg.

Or maybe not. You’re running out—of second chances, fresh papers, liquid ink on your stained and aching hands. Just tear the page out.

You hum to yourself instead, until it sounds weak even to your ears. You have to stop before you start crying where you sit. You can’t do that, not now, not when Tommy could walk in any minute and get that _look_ on his face.

(Where is he?)

Yesterday, or maybe two days ago, or maybe millennia ago, he caught you by the fires, a smoldering coming off your dirt-smeared sleeve, your gloved hand practically on top of the flames. You didn’t realize what was happening until he knocked you over, shrieking in that insufferable way of his.

You’d hugged him despite his struggling, and even that wasn’t enough. You built that country to be free. What kind of freedom is this? There is nothing left of that life and light you promised yourself so long ago. The long dark nights didn’t leave you when you escaped that wood. The long dark nights seeped into you and destroyed everything you touched. The long dark nights left you shaking—was it fear or cold or something that should have been anger?—and now you are still shaking, spilling uncrushed lapis onto the floor.

Oh, you cannot wait to be warm again.

* * *

You breathe, and the air tastes of ash. You grin. Ashes to ashes. It’s fitting. It is—you read somewhere once about how stories, the truly good stories, are tightly woven contraptions, perfectly tied together in all the right places so that everything folds back on itself, not a detail out of place.

The echo of the button clicking in its place on the rocky wall rings in your ears. You lean back and nearly slip off your feet, bubbling with exhausted, delirious joy. Carved into the stone around you is your precious writing, a final blanket, something to muffle the sting of smoke in your eyes. You worked so hard for this, and now you can be done. It’s done.

It was over so long ago anyway.

“It’s perfect! It’s perfect,” you declare. Ashes to ashes. “Chekov’s gun!”

Your father stares at you with forlorn eyes. He always had such a way of looking sad. Maybe melancholy runs in the family, the only heirloom your fractured bloodline can be bothered to pass on. Maybe it’s his fault something is wrong with you. Maybe you’re fundamentally broken somehow, and he was the one that did it.

It would be satisfying if that was true. Chekov’s gun. But you’ve seen where hoping gets you. There is a downturn to his mouth that speaks volumes to his disappointment, and a certainty in the curl of his callused hands, and you find you don’t really care about the melancholy anymore.

He calls himself your father. He has the nerve to call himself _Tommy’s_ father. You think of orange fur, silky under your touch, and the memory of a lullaby you haven’t sung in forever. (You haven’t sung anything in so long. You miss making music. You miss the music of this land, the way it called to you. Something so sweet and perfect, for once, all for you.)

You think, despite everything, you could’ve been a better father than he ever was. And isn’t that funny? You look out the hole torn in the rocky wall, the rubble still grinding and tumbling as the very foundations of your country shiver with the aftershocks of the explosions. Your son is staring up at you with broken eyes. 

Your hands are bleeding, the same hands that used to stroke over his ears and brush the tears away when he cried. Your son is chasing down the same elusive dreams you did, chasing whatever it takes to be happy again. Another terrible inheritance, perhaps: that eternal, impossible quest.

Your son is not crying for you, you with the blade aimed at your stomach, you with the soot-smeared face and the ragged, torn-out voice. And still you think you might’ve been a better father than your own ever was.

“Wil,” says your father with the forlorn eyes.

“Kill me,” you tell him. You’re taller than him. You laugh, because you’ve always pictured him as taller. “Kill me!”

(Your dearest memory, the one you don’t dare think of too often, is the one where his wings are feathers, not shimmering like this, not buzzing like a beetle’s under iridescent armour. Those glorious wings, not fractured glass but gentle grey-white down, are wrapped around you, protecting you from all the terrible things children fear. You ache with loss and love in equal measure. Were his wings ever like that? Do you remember?)

“I can’t kill you!” shouts the stranger with your father’s name. You know, at least, where you got your temper from. How old did he think you were, when he set you loose into the wilderness alone? How old does he think you are, when he bursts into this burning country with your name on his tongue? “You’re my _son_ , Wilbur.”

There are people to whom he is known as the Angel. A winged grace. A perfect being. A picture of benevolence so beatific you don’t see the sharp edge of his blade until its too late.

You don’t believe in those kinds of things, things like merciful divinities. There is no use crying out to the creatures others call holy. You saw the proof, during those long dark nights, and you see the proof of it still. 

You scrape out a home for yourself and it is crushed. You build a nation for your people and it is dismantled. You take a child by the hand and promise them the world, and like a spiteful, biting dog, your universe turns back around on you, makes a liar of your tongue.

You don’t want this anymore. You thought you could hold on, could make those clever, gifted words of yours into beautiful things. Freedom, and hope, and that particular levity that birds carry on the undersides of their wings. Things worth remembering long after you are gone. Instead, your legacy is ashes. Instead, your family has been cracked open down the middle. Instead, you have welcomed a tyrant into your home and invited him to leave the children as a ragged edge from where someone tore the pages of their childhood out.

You raise your hands toward your father like a plea. The redstone dust on your fingertips is such a beautiful contrast to the deep, implacable blue that dyes your gloves so often now. You can’t ever seem to wash it out. Your father keeps staring, pleading right back with words you don’t really hear.

You rub the grit on your hands onto your coat. Red and blue and white, and the promise of something sunlit-warm. You cannot wait to be warm again, but first, you must make this place right.

Your father raises his sword, shining, shining, shining.

L’Manburg will be your perfect symphony. Unfinished. Forever unfinished. But what greater beauty is there than the blank page? What more brilliant, more _possible_ , than the potential buried in a fresh sheet of paper? No more notes, no more ink. Just quantum possibility, everything at once folded into itself. There could be no greater ending.

If you cannot have your symphony as it was meant to be, now you know no one can.

In the end, your elation is so great you hardly notice the blood. You give yourself over to death’s waiting arms, and then, at last, you are happy. 


End file.
